Tag Archives: public policy

MuniForge: Creating municipalities that work like the web

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Last month I published the following article in the Municipal Information Systems Association’s journal Municipal Interface. The article was behind a firewall so now that the month has gone by I’m throwing it up here. Basically, it makes the case for why, if government’s applied open source licenses to the software they developed (or paid to develop), they could save 100’s of millions, or more likely billions of dollars, a year. Got a couple of emails from municipal IT professionals from across the country

MuniForge: Creating Municipalities that Work like the Web

Introduction

This past May the City of Vancouver passed what is now referred to as “Open 3”.This motion states that the City will use open standards for managing its information, treat open source and proprietary software equally during the procurement cycle, and apply open source licenses to software the city creates.

While a great deal of media attention has focused on the citizen engagement potential of open data, but the implications of the second half of the motion – that relating to open source software – has gone relatively unnoticed. This is all the more surprising since last year the Mayor of Toronto’s also promised his city would apply an open source license to software it creates. This means that two of Canada’s largest municipalities are set to apply open source licenses to software they create in house. Consequently, the source code and the software itself will be available for free under a license that permits users to use, change, improve and redistribute it in modified or unmodified forms.

If capitalized upon these announcements could herald a revolution in how cities currently procure and develop software. Rather than having thousands of small municipalities collectively spending billions of dollars to each recreate the own wheel the open sourcing of municipal software could weave together Canada’s municipal IT departments into one giant network in which expertise and specialized talents drive up quality and security to the benefit of all while simultaneously collapsing the costs of development and support. Most interestingly, while this shift will benefit larger cities, its benefit and impact could be most dramatic and positive among the country’s smaller cities (those with populations under 200K). What is needed to make it happen is a central platform where the source code and documentation for software that cities wish to share can be uploaded and collaborated on. In short, Canada needs a Sourceforge, or better, a GitHub for municipal software.

The cost

For the last two hundred years one feature has dominated the landscape for the majority if municipalities in Canada: isolation. In a country as vast and sparsely populated as ours villages, towns, and cities have often found themselves alone. For citizens the railway, the telegraph, then the highway and telecommunications system eroded that isolation, but if we look at the operations of cities this isolation remains a dominant feature. Most Canadian municipalities are highly effective, but ultimately self contained islands. Municipal IT departments are no different. One municipality rarely talks to that of another, particularly if they are not neighbours.

The result of this process is that in many cities across Canada IT solutions are frequently developed in one of two manners.

The first is the procurement model. Thankfully, when the product is off the shelf, or easily customized, deployment can occur quickly, this however, is rarely the case. More often, larger software and expensive consulting firms are needed to deploy such solutions frequently leaving them beyond the means of many smaller cities. Moreover, from an economic development perspective the dollars spent on these deployments often flow out of the community to companies and consultants based elsewhere. On the flip side, local, smaller firms, if they exist at all, tend to be untested and frequently lack the expertise and competition necessary to provide a reliable and affordable product. Finally, regardless of the firms’ size, most solutions are proprietary and so lock a city into the solution in perpetuity. This not only holds the city hostage to the supplier, it eliminates future competition and worse, should the provider go out of business, it saddles the city with an unsupported system which will be painful and expensive to upgrade out of.

The second option is to develop in-house. For smaller cities with limited IT departments this option can be challenging, but is often still cheaper than hiring an external vendor. Here the challenge is that any solution is limited by the skills and talents of the City’s IT staff. A small city, with even a gifted IT staff of 2-5 people will be challenged to effectively build and roll out all the IT infrastructure city staff and citizens need. Moreover, keeping pace with security concerns, new technologies and new services poses additional challenges.

In both cases the IT services a city can develop and support for staff and citizens is be limited by either the skills and capacity of its team or the size of its procurement budget. In short, the collective purchasing power, development capacity and technical expertise of Canada’s municipal IT departments is lost because we remain isolated from one another. With each city IT department acting like an island this creates enormous constraints and waste. Software is frequently recreated hundreds of times over as each small city creates its own service or purchases its own license.

The opportunity

It need not be this way. Rather than a patchwork of isolated islands, Canada’s municipal IT departments could be a vast interconnected network.

If even two small communities in Canada applied an open source license to a software they were producing, allowed anyone to download it and documented it well the cost savings would be significant. Rather than having two entities create what is functionally the same piece of software, the cost would be shared. Once available, other cities could download and write patches that would allow this software to integrate with their own hardware/software infrastructure. These patches would also be open source making it easier for still more cities to use the software. The more cities participate in identifying bugs, supplying patches and writing documentation, the lower the costs to everyone becomes. This is how Linus Torvalds started a community whose operating system – Linux – would become world class. It is the same process by which Apache came to dominate webservers and it is the same approach used by Mozilla to create Firefox, a web browser whose market share now rivals that of Internet Explorer. The opportunity to save municipalities millions, if not billions in software licensing and/or development costs every year is real and tangible.

What would such a network look like and how hard would it be to create? I suspect that two pieces would need to be in place to begin growing a nascent network.

First, and foremost, there need to be a handful of small projects. Often the most successful source projects are those that start collaboratively. This way the processes and culture are, from the get go, geared towards collaboration and sharing.  This is also why smaller cities are the perfect place to start for collaborating on open source projects. The world’s large cities are happy to explore new models, but they are too rich, too big and too invested in their current systems to drive change. The big cities can afford Accenture. Small cities are not only more nimble, they have the most to gain. By working together and using open source they can provide a level of service comparable to that of the big cities, at a fraction of the cost. An even simpler first step would be to ensure that when contractors sign on to create new software for a city, they agree that the final product will be available under and open source license.

Second, MISA, or another body, should create a Sourceforge clone for hosting open sourced municipal software projects. Sourceforge is an American based open source software development web site which provides services that help people build cool and share software with coders around the world. It presently hosts more than 230,000 software projects has over 2 million registered users. Soureforge operates as a sort of market place for software initiatives, a place where one can locate software one is interested in and then both download it and/or become part of a community to improve it.

A Soureforge clone – say Muniforge – would be a repository for software that municipalities across the country could download and use for free. It would also be the platform upon which collaboration around developing, patching and documenting would take place. Muniforge could also offer tips, tools and learning materials for those new to the open source space on how to effectively lead, participate and work within an open source community. This said, if MISA wanted to keep costs even lower, it wouldn’t even need to create a sourecforge clone, it could simply use the actual sourceforge website and lobby the company to create a new “municipal” category.

And herein lies the second great opportunity of such a platform. It can completely restructure the government software business in Canada. At the moment Canadian municipalities must choose between competing proprietary systems that lock them into to a specific vendor. Worst still, they must pay for both the software development and ongoing support. A Muniforge would allow for a new type of vendor modeled after Redhat – the company that offers support to users that adopt its version of the free, open source Linux operating system. Suddenly while vendors can’t sell software found on Muniforge, they could offer support for it. Cities would not have the benefit of outsourcing support, without having to pay for the development of a custom, proprietary software system. Moreover, if they are not happy with their support they can always bring it in house, or even ask a competing company to provide support. Since the software is open source nothing prevents several companies from supporting the same piece of software – enhancing service, increasing competition and driving down prices.

There is another, final, global benefit to this approach to software development. Over time, a Muniforge could begin to host all of the software necessary to run a modern day municipality. This has dramatic implications for cities in the developing world. Today, thanks to rapid urbanization, many towns and villages in Asian and Africa will be tomorrow’s cities and megacities. With only a fraction of the resources these cities will need to be able to offer the services that are today common place in Canada. With Muniforge they could potentially download all the infrastructure they need for free – enabling precious resources to go towards other critical pieces of infrastructure such as sewers and drinking water. Moreover, a Muniforge would encourage small local IT support organizations to develop in those cities providing jobs fostering IT innovation where it is needed most.  Better still, over time, patches and solutions would flow the other way, as more and more cities help improve the code base of projects found on Muniforge.

Conclusion

The internet has demonstrated that new, low cost models of software development exist. Open source software development has shown how loosely connected networks of coders/users from across a country, or even around the world can create world class software that rivals and even outperforms software created by the largest proprietary developers. This is the logic of the web – participation, better development and low-cost development.

The question cities across Canada need to ask themselves is: do we want to remain isolated islands, or do we want to work like the web, working collaboratively to offer better services, more quickly and at a lower cost. If even only some cities choose the later answer an infrastructure to enable collaboration can be put in place at virtually no cost, while the potential benefits and the opportunity to restructure the government software industry would be significant. Island or network – which do we want to be?

New Policy Journal: The Public Policy and Governance Review

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Last week saw the launch of a new biannual online journal called The Public Policy and Governance Review. Started by students and faculty from universities across Canada the journal seeks to inject some new ideas and thoughts into the public policy sphere.

I would argue that it already has.

Check out this paragraph from its “About Us” page.

The Public Policy and Governance Review is in the business of promoting ideas and is not interested in proprietary rights. We believe that authors deserve credit for their work and that using any intellectual material warrants referencing, but other than that, we hope that the ideas published in the PPGR disseminate well beyond the confines of this website. As such and as a matter of principle, the Public Policy and Governance Review uses a less-restrictive licensing agreement for publication than traditional copyright. We publish as much of the PPGR as possible under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works license. This is a licensing agreement that relaxes some of the restrictions associated with traditional copyright and allows our readers to distribute material more easily. It allows authors’ works to be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes as long as the work is not modified and attribution is maintained.

Take note – these are Masters of Public Policy and Governance students and they have chosen to use a Creative Commons license – not copyright – for their journal. Note that they WANT others to re-post and comment on the material on blogs and other sites. This is a journal interested in using the most modern technology and legal tools to do what all journals start off wanting to do: initiating interesting conversation and spreading ideas.

This alone should make senior public servants take notice. If you are a senior public servant and you think debates over copyright don’t matter to you… your next hire (and ultimately, your successor) thinks differently.

Two additional asides:

First, for real copyright geeks that are wondering, yes I actually think they should have allowed attributed derivative works… since, well, all works are derivative works of something – nothing is completely original – but, well, one step at a time I suppose.

Second, before the launch of the first edition of the Public Policy and Governance Review the editors sat down and interviewed me on the future of the public service. You can read the interview here (pdf).

オープンデータの3つの規則

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[The following is a Japanese Translation of this post – I’ll be publishing a different language each day this week.]

158px-Flag_of_Japan.svg私はここ数年来、開かれた政府の仕事に深く関わってきた。具体的には政府のデータの公開情報を市民の誰もが活用ができるようにと主張してきた。私が興味を持ったことを書いてみると、公開情報と技術と世代の変化が政府を変えて行くと言うことだ。
今年の初めに、バンクーバーの市長と市議会にオープンモーション（スタッフの間ではOpen 3と呼ばれている）を導入することを助言し始め、カナダで最初にバンクーバー市のオープンデータポータルを作り出した。最近では、オーストラリア政府が私に国際リファレンスグループのための政府2.0特別専門委員会に.出席するよう依頼してきた。

開かれた政府の仕事は広範囲にわたるが、最近の私の仕事では公開データにおいて、結局、何が必要か何を求めているのかの本質を見極めることを強く求められた。カナダ政府情報機関の委員が行ったデジタル時代のRight to Know 週間において、結果的には議会の討論中に私の努力したことが出席者と共有された。：

政府公開データの3つの規則

  1. もし、スパイダーやインデックスがなければ利用できない。
  2. もし、読めない形式だったら活用できない。
  3. もし、法律の枠組みにおいて、許可がなければ使用できない。

例えば、（1）　基本的なことを言うと、もしC（または他の検索エンジン）が見つからなければ、殆どの市民がそのことを調べることができない。だから、それが可能な、あらゆる検索エンジンスパイダーを利用したほうがいい。

データを見つけた後、（2）で言っていることは、そのデータが使えることが必要である。役立つフォームで引き出したりダウンロードしたりする必要がある。（例えば、API、サブスクリプションフィード、書類）グーグルマップや他のデータセットを使ったり、オープンオフィースで分析したり、標準のものを変換したり、必要なプログラムを使えることが必要である。
データーを自由に使ったりできない人は討論から外される。

最終的にデータが見つかって使えても、（3）の関係で、作ったものを共有したり、他の人を動員したり、新しいサービスや興味あることを供給する法律的な許可が必要と言う著作権の問題が生じてくる。情報は自由に使用できるライセンスが必要であるが、理想を言えば、全くライセンスがないほうが良く、著作権に触れない政府のデータがあれば一番良い。

データを見つけて使って、共有することが私たちの望んでいることである。

もちろん、インターネットの検索をすると他人も同じように考えていたことが分かる。
おそらくCIOレベルや低レベルの会話には適した８つの重要なオープンガーバメントデータがあるが、政治家（あるいは副大臣、政府長官、最高経営者）に話す時には、以上の３つが基本になっていることが分かった。それは、覚えておくべき必要とされる本質的な事項である。

This Japanese translation was made possible thanks to the generous volunteer work of Tosh Nagashima at the Space-Time Research company in Australia. The team there was amazing in providing a number of translations – I am very much in their debt.

Drie Regels voor Open Overheidsdata

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The following is a Dutch Translation of this post – I’ll be publishing a different language each day this week.

158px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svgIn de afgelopen jaren ben ik in toenemende mate betrokken geworden bij de Open Overheid beweging en in het bijzonder kom ik op voor Open Data, het beschikbaar maken van informatie die de overheid verzamelt en creëert zodat burgers de informatie kunnen analyseren, gebruiken en hergebruiken voor nieuwe doelen. Mijn interesse in dit onderwerp is een gevolg dat ik veel geschreven en werk heb verricht hoe technologie, open systemen en de generatie overgang de overheid zullen veranderen. Begin dit jaar ben ik begonnen met het adviseren van de burgemeester en gemeenteraad van de stad Vancouver om de Open Motie aan te nemen (ook wel Open3 genoemd) en het ontwikkelen van Vancouver’s Open Data portaal, de eerste gemeentelijk open data portaal in Canada. Recentelijk ben ik gevraagd door de Australische overheid om deel te nemen aan de International Reference Group voor haar Overheid 2.0 Taskforce.

Uiteraard is de Open Overheid beweging behoorlijk breed, maar in mijn meer recente werk heb ik getracht om de kern van Open Data te destilleren uit deze bredere beweging. Wat hebben we nu echt nodig en vragen we dat wel? Tijdens de  Conferentie voor Parlementariërs: Transparantie in het Digitale Tijdperk “Right to Know Week” panel discussie – georganiseerd door het Office of the Information Commissioner – , introduceerde ik drie regels voor Open Overheidsdata.

Drie Regels voor Open Overheidsdata

  1. Als data niet kan worden gevonden of doorzoekbaar gemaakt, dan bestaat het niet
  2. Als data niet beschikbaar is in een open en leesbare vorm voor computers, dan zal het burgers niet uitnodigen om er mee aan de slag te gaan.
  3. Als er geen juridisch raamwerk is dat toestaat om de data te hergebruiken, dan zal het burgers niet empoweren.

Een korte toelichting, (1) betekent eigenlijk: kan ik het vinden? Wanneer Google (en elke andere zoekmachine) informatie niet kan vinden, dan zal dat voor de meeste burgers betekenen dat de informatie niet bestaat. Dus het is van cruciaal belang dat je ervoor zorgt dat de data geoptimaliseerd is om te worden geïndexeerd door allerlei soorten zoekmachines.

Als ik de data heb gevonden, dan richt Regel (2) zich op het bruikbaar maken van de data. Ik moet met de data kunnen spelen. Dat betekent dat ik in staat moet zijn om de data te downloaden in een eenvoudig en bruikbaar formaat (zoals een API, een RSS feed of een bestand met toelichting). Burgers hebben data nodig dat ze in staat stelt om een mash-up te maken met Google Maps of andere websites, of te analyseren in OpenOffice of het te converteren naar een bestandsformaat of programma naar eigen inzicht. Burgers die niet kunnen spelen met informatie zijn burgers die niet meedoen aan het debat .

Uiteindelijk, zelfs wanneer ik de data kan vinden en er mee kan spelen, dan benadrukt Regel (3) dat ik een juridisch raamwerk nodig heb dat mij toestaat om te delen wat ik heb gemaakt, dat ik andere burgers mag uitnodigen en organiseren om te participeren, er een nieuwe dienst om heen kan bouwen of dat ik gewoon interessante feiten mag benadrukken.  Dit betekent dat de licentie behorende tot de informatie en data zo min mogelijk restricties oplegt aan het gebruik, idealiter komt wordt overheidsdata beschikbaar gesteld aan het publieke domein. De beste overheidsdata en informatie is welke die niet beschermd is door auteursrechten. Databestanden  die gelicenseerd zijn op een wijze dat het burgers onmogelijk wordt gemaakt om hun werk te delen, maakt burgers monddood en leidt tot censurering.

Zoeken, spelen, en delen. Dat is wat wij willen.

Een snelle zoektocht op het Internet laat zien dat andere mensen ook hebben nagedacht over dit onderwerp. Er is een uitstekend stuk over 8 Principes van Open Overheidsdata die meer gedetailleerd zijn, en misschien zelfs beter, zeker voor discussies op CIO niveau. Maar voordat we gaan praten met politici (of senior ambtenaren en CEO’s) en net zoals de mensen aanwezig bij de conferentie vorige maanden, vond ik de eenvoud van drie belangrijker: het zijn drie simpele regels die iedereen makkelijk kan onthouden.

This Dutch translation was made possible due to the generous work of Diederik van Lieree.

Три закона Oткрытой базы данных:

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[The following is a Russian Translation of this post – I’m doing a different language each day this week.]

На протяжение последних лет я все больше и больше был вовлечен в движение за поддержку «открытого правительства»  или если говорить более конкретно выступал в защиту «открых данных», т.е. свободный доступ населения к информации которая формируется и публикуется государством. Информация, которую любой человек может проанализировать и использовать в своих целях. Развитию моего интереса к этой сфере послужили моя работа которую я провел и статьи написаные мной в области того как технология, открытые системы и смена поколений преобразуют правительство. В начале года я начал проводить консультации с Мэром и Советом Города Ванкувера с целью оказания помощи по внедрению  «Открытоко Движения» (или как его стали называть – «Доступ3») и создания Ванкуверского открытого портала данных, первый областной открытый портал данных в Канаде. В более недавнем прошлом, австралийское правительство попросило меня возглавить Международную Справочную Группу для целевой группы Правительства 2.0.

Ясно что движение открытого правительства понятие довольно обширное, но моя недавняя работа убедила меня попытаться определить часть этого движения – идею открытых данных. Что же в конечном счете нам необходимо и чего конкретно мы хотим? Позже,  я выступил перед дискусионной комисией на Конференции для парламентариев под названием «Прозрачность в эпоху цифровых технологий и Неделя Права на Информацию» организованную канадским кабинетом уполномоченного по обеспечению инормационной даты. Там я поделился своей наиболее аккуратной версией  по определению идеи: “Три закона открытых государственных информационных данных”
Три закона открытых государственных информационных данных:

1. Если она не будет снабжена указателем,т.е проиндексирована или сплетена она не будет существовать
2. Если она не доступнa в открытом формате и в формате, доступным компьютерной програме – она не может привлечь массы
3. Елси правовые рамки не позволяют ее использования в новых целях, то она не может вдохновлять

Для пояснения (1) в принципе значит: Могу ли я ее найти — Если Google и другие поисковые программы не могут найти ее, то по существу она не существует для большенства граждан.Значит дата должна быть оптимизирована, проиндексирована и сплетена для поиска паутинных поисковых систем.

После того как я нашел ее, (2) указывает что она должна быть полезной, и предоставлять возможность дальнейшего использования и манипулирования. Следовательно, мне необходимо загрузить ее в подходящем формате (например, через интерфэйс, или как подписку на файлы, или документрированый файл). Населению нужна дата в формате который даст им возможность совместить ее с Google Maps и другими составами данных, анализировать ее в Open Office или конвертировать ее в подходящий формат и использовать ее в любой другой программе. Население которое не может использовать и играть с информацией- не вовлечено или плохо представлено в дискуционых вопросах.

В заключении, даже если я могу найти эту информацию использовать, (3) подчеркивает тот факт что я нуждаюсь в законодательном уставе, которое позволит мне обмениваться тем что я создал, чтобы привлечь других, предоставить новый сервис или просто продемонстрировать интересный факт. Это значит что информация и база данных должна быть лицензирована и быть доступна для как можно более свободного пользования или в идеальном случае, не иметь ни каких лицензий вообще. Самый лучший правительственный состав данных и информации это тот который не защищен авторским правом. Состав данных который лицензирован в таком виде который препятствуют открытому распостронению обработаных данных, не может считаться удовлетворительным. Такой подход не вдохновляет граждан страны, а только способствует молчанию и цензуре.

Возможность Найти, Использовать и Распространить – вот чего мы хотим.

Конечно, быстрый просмотр Интернета показал, что другие также думают об этом.Существует превосходныe 8 принципов открытого государственного состава данных которые более подробны и возможно лучше подходят для началъственного уровня и ниже. Но, разговаривая с политиками (или заместителями министра, секретарями кабинета или начальниками администраций) я нахожу простота этих трех принципов более доступна для понимания, такой простой список им легче запомнить и требовать у правительства

This Russian translation was made possible thanks to the generous volunteer work of Lina Lebon at the Space-Time Research company in Australia. The team there was amazing in providing a number of translations – I am very much in their debt.

开放数据的三个定律

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[The following is a Chinese Translation of this post – I’m doing a different language each day this week.]

开放数据的三个定律：158px-Flag_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China.svg在过去的三年中，笔者逐步深入参与到政府部门的政务公开领域—更准确的说是开放数据领域，将政府部门收集和生成的数据向普通用户免费开放，并根据各自需求进行分析，加工和使用。笔者在这方面的兴趣主要来自于之前对“技术， 开放系统及其更新换代是如何对政务工作产生影响的”课题的工作及写作经历。今年早些时候我开始向温哥华市长及议会提供咨询服务，帮助他们通过政务公开的动议（政府职员称之为“open3”），并建立开放数据门户，使之成为加拿大史上第一个市政开放数据门户。近期，澳大利亚政府也邀请我加入其政务2.0工程的国际咨询专家组。

显而易见，政务公开涉及面广，但最近的工作促使笔者尝试揭开其中开放数据方面的本质。归根结底，我们到底需要什么，而又要求得到什么？因此，当笔者出席一个由加拿大政府信息委员会办公室组织的为期一周面向议会成员，主题为“数字时代知情权的透明度”的交流活动中，与在座人士分享了这方面工作的最新进展：政务数据开放的三个定律。

政务数据开放的三个定律：
1，如果数据不能被链接或索引，数据就是不存在的
2，如果数据不是开放并且由机器可读的格式，数据就是不可使用的
3，如果一个合法平台不允许改变数据用途，数据就是未授权使用的

更详细的说，定律一指：数据能否被用户找到？如果用谷歌（或是其他搜索引擎）不能检索到，该数据对绝大多数普通用户在本质上就是不存在的。因此，数据提供方必须优化系统，以使数据能被各类的搜索引擎检索到。

当用户取得数据后，定律二强调要让数据变得有用， 用户必须能操作该数据。因而，用户需要能够提取数据或下载为一个实用的格式（例如：一个应用程序编程接口，订阅数据或是资料文件）。用户需要获取特定格式的数据以使他们能将之与谷歌地图或其他数据合成呈现，用Open Office阅读分析数据，或是进一步转换为其他应用程序能够接受的格式。如果在数据交流过程中用户不能使用并操作信息，该用户将在此过程中被边缘化。

最后，当用户能够获取并使用数据后，定律三强调用户需要一个合法的平台使之能够共享自己的成果，并发动其他的用户，提供新的服务或是呈现相关主题数据。这就意味着信息和数据的授权应当允许最大限度的自由，或是更加理想化的，无需授权。最好的政务信息和数据是无需进行版权保护的。带有授权信息并有意阻止用户间共享的数据缺乏效用，无法传播且备受诟病。

获取，使用数据，并共享成果。这是广大用户的需求。

当然，浏览互联网读者还能够发现其他相关的研究成果。颇为出众的一篇题为政务数据开放的8个原则，其中讨论了更多细节，更适合信息主管及其下属阅读。但如果对象是政治人物（分管总理，内阁部长或是执行主管），我发现前文三个定律更加简单实用，也更容易引起听众共鸣。

This Chinese translation was made possible thanks to the generous volunteer work of WeiWie Ding at the Space-Time Research company in Australia. The team there was amazing in providing a number of translations – I am very much in their debt.

Die drei Gesetze der offenen Daten

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[The following is a German Translation of this post – I’ll be publishing a different language each day this week.]

175px-Flag_of_Germany.svgIn den vergangenen drei Jahren habe ich mich zunehmend in der Bewegung für eine offene Regierung engagiert – und insbesondere offene Daten befürwortet; die freie Weitergabe der durch die Regierung gesammelten oder erstellten Informationen zur Analyse, Wiederverwertung und Nutzung durch die Bürger. Mein Interesse auf diesem Gebiet kommt vom Schreiben und anderer Arbeit darüber, wie Technik, offene Systeme und Generationswechsel die Regierung verändern werden. Früher in diesem Jahr begann ich damit, den Bürgermeister und den Rat der Stadt Vancouver zu beraten und war behilflich, “Open Motion” zu erlassen (von den Angestellten Open3 genannt) und Vancouvers “Open Data Pool” zu schaffen, das erste kommunale offene Datenportal in Kanada. Kürzlich wurde ich seitens der Australischen Regierung gebeten, der Internationalen Referenzgruppe für die dortige Government 2.0 Taskforce beizusitzen.

Offensichtlich ist die Bewegung für offene Regierung sehr gross, jedoch hat mich meine jüngste Arbeit dazu bewogen, den Versuch zu unternehmen, das Wesen des Teils der Bewegung, der sich mit offenen Daten beschäftigt, zusammenzufassen. Was brauchen wir letztlich, und was fordern wir. Während meines Vortrags für eine Podiumsdiskussion auf der Konferenz für Parlamentarier: “Tranzparenz in der Digitalen Ära” im Rahmen der “Right to Know” Woche, organisiert durch das kanadische Regierungsbüro des Informationsbeauftragten, habe ich folglich meine bisher grösste Bemühung um eine Zusammenfassung präsentiert: Drei Gesetze für offene Regierungsdaten.

Die drei Gesetze für offene Regierungsdaten:

  1. Wenn sie nicht maschinell erfasst oder katalogisiert werden können, existieren sie nicht
  2. Wenn sie nicht in offenem und maschinenlesbarem Format verfügbar sind, können sie nicht beteiligend wirken
  3. Wenn rechtliche Umstände eine Wiederverwertung nicht zulassen, können sie nicht befähigen

Zur Erklärung: (1) bedeutet im Wesentlichen: Kann ich sie finden? Wenn Google (und/oder andere Suchmaschinen) sie nicht finden können, existieren sie für die meisten Bürger praktisch nicht. Ihr solltet sicherstellen, daß es von allen Arten Crawlern der Suchmaschinen optimal gefunden werden kann.

Wenn sie gefunden wurden, stellt (2) fest, dass, um nützlich zu sein, muss ich die Daten benutzen (oder damit spielen) können. Folglich muss ich sie in einem brauchbaren Format herunterladen können (z.B. API, elektronisches Abo oder als dokumentierte Datei). Bürger benötigen die Daten in einer Form, die sich mit Google Maps oder anderen Datensätzen verbinden lässt, mit Open Office analysierbar ist oder in einen Standard ihrer Wahl zur Verwendung mit einem Programm ihrer Wahl umwandeln lässt. Bürger, die Informationen nicht benutzen oder damit spielen können, sind Bürger, die von der Diskussion ausgegrenzt oder ausgeklinkt sind.

Schließlich, sogar wenn ich sie finden und benutzen kann, hebt (3) hervor, dass es einen rechtlichen Rahmen geben muss, der mir erlaubt, das von mir Geschaffene zu verbreiten, andere Bürger zu mobilisieren, eine neue Dienstleistung anzubieten oder auch nur auf eine interessante Tatsache hinzuweisen. Das bedeutet, dass Informationen und Daten freigegeben sein müssen, um die grösstmögliche freie Nutzung zu ermöglichen oder besser noch, keinen Auflagen unterliegen sollten. Die besten Daten und Informationen der Regierung sind solche, die nicht mit einem Copyright versehen werden können. Datensätze, die einer Berechtigung bedürfen, die die Bürger am Ende davon abhält, ihre Arbeit miteinander auszutauschen, verleihen keine Macht, sie bringen zum Schweigen und zensieren.

Finden, Nutzen und Austauschen. Das ist, was wir wollen.

Natürlich hat eine kurze Suche im Internet ergeben, dass andere auch über dieses Thema nachgedacht haben. Es gibt die hervorragenden 8 Prinzipien der offenen Regierungsdaten, die detaillierter und vielleicht besser für die Konversation auf CIO Ebene und darunter geeignet sind. Um aber mit Politikern zu sprechen (oder Deputierten, Kabinettsekretären oder CEOs) empfinde ich die Einfachheit dieser drei weitaus nachhaltiger; sie sind eine einfachere Liste, an die sich die Betreffenden erinnern und die sie einfordern können.

This German Translation was made possible due to the generous work of Sielke Voss at One on One German. Eva Höll of Space-Time Research was also very generous in reviewing the translation.

Three Laws of Open Data (International Edition)

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When I published the Three Laws of Open Data post back on September 30, 2009 I was pleasantly surprised by how much traffic it garnered. In addition, a number of people emailed me positive feedback about the post (including some who read a revised version on the Australian Governments Web 2.0 Taskforce blog).

All this got me thinking – there must be a number of people out there for whom the three laws are hard to understand not because they are technical, but because I only ever blog in English. Just once I thought it would be cool to have a blog post be translated – and this post felt popular and important enough to be worthwhile. So I put out a twitter request asking if anyone might “localize” the three laws. After much positive feedback and generous help, I’ll be publishing the text below in several different major languages, one – and sometimes two – a day. If you’ve got friends or colleagues overseas who you think might be interested please send them the appropriate link!

You can read the post below in:

The Three Laws of Open Data:

Over the past few years I have become increasingly involved in the movement for open government – and more specifically advocating for Open Data, the sharing of information government collects and generates freely towards citizens such that they can analyze it, re-purpose and use it themselves. My interest in this space comes out of writing and work I’ve down around how technology, open systems and generational change will transform government. Earlier this year I began advising the Mayor and Council of the City of Vancouver helping them pass the Open Motion (referred to by staff as Open3) and create Vancouver’s Open Data Portal, the first municipal open data portal in Canada. More recently, the Australian Government’s has asked me to sit on the International Reference Group for it’s Government 2.0 Taskforce.

Obviously the open government movement is quite broad, but my recent work has pushed me to try to distill out the essence of the Open Data piece of this movement. What, ultimately, do we need and are we asking for. Consequently, while presenting for a panel discussion on Conference for Parliamentarians: Transparency in the Digital Era fro Right to Know Week organized by the Canadian Government’s Office of the Information Commissioner I shared my best effort to date of this distillation: Three laws for Open Government Data.

The Three Laws of Open Government Data:

  1. If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist
  2. If it isn’t available in open and machine readable format, it can’t engage
  3. If a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it doesn’t empower

To explain, (1) basically means: Can I find it? If Google (and/or other search engines) can’t find it, it essentially doesn’t exist for most citizens. So you’d better ensure that you are optimized to be crawled by all sorts of search engine spiders.

After I’ve found it, (2) notes that, to be useful, I need to be able to use (or play with) the data. Consequently, I need to be able to pull or download it in a useful format (e.g. an API, subscription feed, or a documented file). Citizens need data in a form that lets them mash it up with Google Maps or other data sets, analyze in Open Office or convert to a standard of their choosing and use in any program they would like. Citizens who can’t use and play with information are citizens who are disengaged/marginalized from the discussion.

Finally, even if I can find it and use it, (3) highlights that I need a legal framework that allows me to share what I’ve created, to be able to mobilize other citizens, provide a new services or just point out an interesting fact. This means information and data needs to be licensed to allow the freest possible use or, ideally, have no licensing at all. The best government data and information is that which cannot be copyright protected. Data sets that are licensed in a manner that effectively prevent citizens from sharing their work with one another do not empower, it silences and censures.

Find, Use and Share. That’s want we want.

Of course, a brief scan of the internet has revealed that others have also been thinking about this as well. There is this excellent 8 Principle of Open Government Data that are more detailed and perhaps better suited for a CIO level and lower conversation. But for talking to politicians (or Deputy Ministers, Cabinet Secretaries or CEOs) I found the simplicity of these three resonates more strongly; it is a simpler list they can remember and demand.

Why not open flu data?

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On Monday, Nov. 23 the Globe ran this piece I wrote as a Special to The Globe and Mail. I’m cross-posting it back here for those who may have missed it. Hope you enjoy!

An interesting thread keeps popping up in The Globe’s reporting on H1N1. As you examine the efforts of the federal and provincial governments to co-ordinate their response to the crisis only one thing appears to be more rare than the vaccine itself: information.

For example, on Nov. 11, Patrick Brethour reported that “The premiers resolved to press the federal government to give them more timely information on vaccine supplies during their own conference call last Friday. Health officials across Canada have expressed frustration that Ottawa has been slow to inform them about how much vaccine provinces and territories will get each week.”

And of course, it isn’t just the provinces complaining about the feds. The feds are similarly complaining about the vaccine suppliers. In response to an unforeseen and last-minute vaccine shortage by GlaxoSmithKline (a manufacturer of the vaccine), David Butler-Jones, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, acknowledged in The Globe on Oct. 31 that “what I know today is not what I knew yesterday morning. And tomorrow I may find out something new.”

For those of you who are wondering what this shortage of information reminds you of, the answer is simple: life before the Internet. Here, in the digital age, we continue to treat the Public Health Officer like a town crier, waiting for him to share how much vaccine the country is going to receive. And the government is treating GSK like a 20th century industrial manufacturer you would bill with a paper invoice.

This in an era of just-in-time delivery, radio-frequency identification chips and a FedEx website that lets me track packages from my home computer. We could resolve this information shortage quite simply by insisting the vaccine suppliers publish a website or data feed, updated hourly or daily, of the vaccine production pipeline, delivery schedule and inventory. That way, if there is a sudden change in the delivery amount the press, health officials or any average citizen could instantly know and plan accordingly. Conversely, the government of Canada could publish its inventory and the process it uses to allocate it to the provinces online for anyone to see. Using this data, local health authorities could calculate how much vaccine they can expect without having to talk to the feds at all. Time and energy would be saved by everyone.

Better still, no more conference calls with the premiers sitting around complaining to the Prime Minister about a lack of information. By insisting on open data – that is sharing the data and information relating to the vaccine supply publicly – the government could both improve transparency, reduce transaction costs and greatly facilitate co-ordination between the various ministries and levels of government. No more waiting for that next meeting or an email from the Chief Public Health Officer to get an update on how much vaccine to expect – just pop online and take a look for yourself.

As noted by Doug Bastien over at GC2.0, the federal government has done an excellent job informing the Canadian public about the need to get vaccinated, including using social media like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube videos. Indeed, they were so successful they helped contribute to the current vaccine shortage. To ensure we respond to the next crisis successfully, however, we need more than a citizen-centric social media strategy. We need a social media and open data strategy that ensures our governments communicate effectively with one another.

Torturing Afghan Prisoners: Blind and Dangerous

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As most (Canadian) readers are probably aware by now (American readers will probably still be interested), yesterday, a senior Canadian diplomat, Richard Colvin, testified to Members of Parliament that Canadian soldiers regularly detained innocent Afghan citizens and then handed them over to Afghan authorities who they knew would torture them. In short, the Canadian government has become knowingly complicit in torturing and violating the human rights of Afghan citizens.

These allegations are serious. They present numerous problems, but I’d like to highlight two: first, that our government has evolved to become willfully blind to torture; and second, that as a result, we jeopardize the Afghan mission and increase the risks to the lives of our own soldiers.

Willfully Blind:

Only slightly less distressing than learning (again) that the Canadian military was allegedly handing civilians over to local authorities who then tortured them is how the Conservatives – once so proud of the public service whistle blower legislation they helped pass – now seem intent on ignoring the issue and tarring the whistle-blower.

It is eerie to read Tory MP Jim Abbott get quoted in the Globe as saying “Out of 5,000 Canadians who have travelled through there, at least in that period of time, you were the one single person who is coming forward with this information. So you will forgive me if I am skeptical.” Of course, the fact that Richard Colvin testified that senior public servants were instructing him and others to not share or record this information is perhaps one of the reason why Mr. Abbott never heard of the problem. But then, Mr. Colvin has not been alone in raising this issue; the Red Cross and Amnesty International both tried to inform the government about this problem, to no avail.

Indeed as Paul Wells has aptly written, the Conservative machine has now embraced what he terms “the bucket defence” and is doing everything it can to sow confusion and claim this is not an issue. (Rather than trying to figure out how it is that Canadians were handing Afghan citizens over to Afghan authorities with full knowledge that they would get tortured). This is not only irresponsible, it demonstrates a lack of respect for the rule of law and human rights, and accountable government. It is also downright dangerous.

Dangerous to the mission and our soldiers:

The Globe article also included this still more frightening quote from Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant. She worries: “The fanning of the fames of outrage over allegations [of torture], however unproven, are really having the desired effect on the Canadian people of wanting our troops to return even quicker.” Note here, the truth is irrelevant, it matters not whether we are complicit in the torture of Afghans, what matters are polling numbers and support for the mission.

It was a very similar response to these allegations by the Prime Minister back in March of 2007 that prompted me to write this blog post on why torturing one’s enemies increases the dangers to your own soldiers. The post was subsequently republished as a opinion piece in the Toronto Star, and since, sadly, it still relevant today, two years later, I’ve reposted it below:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s comments regarding the Liberal’s “passion” for the Taliban was more than just a new low point in Canadian political debate – it also reveals the government’s disturbingly shallow grasp of the strategy and tactics necessary to win in Afghanistan.

For the sake of both our military and the mission, the Prime Minister would be wise to read lieutenant David Grossman’s landmark book, On Killing. In the book, Grossman, a U.S. Army lieutenant-colonel and professor at West Point, describes the psychological implications of killing, both legally and illegally, in battle.

Of specific interest to the Prime Minister would be the psychological argument and historical evidence that explain why adhering to the Geneva Conventions and treating PoWs humanely is of supreme strategic and tactical importance to any organized army. In short, enemy forces are much more willing to surrender when secure in the knowledge that in doing so they will be treated fairly and humanely. Enemies that believe otherwise are likely to fight to the death and inflict greater casualities even in a losing effort.

During World War II, the Allies’ adherence to the Geneva Convention resulted in German soldiers surrendering to U.S. forces in large numbers. This was in sharp contrast to the experience of the Soviets, who cared little for PoWs.

But one need not go back 60 years for evidence. Lieutenant Paul Rieckhoff, who fought in Iraq and then founded and became executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, makes a similar argument regarding today’s conflicts.

Prior to the Abu Ghraib debacle, he noted how “(O)n the streets of Baghdad, I saw countless insurgents surrender when faced with the prospect of a hot meal, a pack of cigarettes and air-conditioning. America’s moral integrity was the single most important weapon my platoon had on the streets. It saved innumerable lives …”

When MPs and ordinary Canadians ask questions about the treatment of Afghan prisoners they don’t do so out of contempt, but out of a deep respect and concern for Canadian soldiers. Canadians know we can ill afford to treat enemy combatants inhumanely. They know this because it is in opposition to our values and our very purpose in Afghanistan.

However, they also know there is a compelling military reason: It would rob our soldiers of possibly their single most important tactical and strategic tool – moral integrity. Without this, who knows how many Canadian lives will be needlessly lost in battles where an insurgent, believing that surrender is tantamount to execution, instead opts to fight to the death.

The Prime Minister may believe that talking like a cowboy about the Taliban and human rights make the government appear tough. But in reality, it only makes it dangerous, both to the mission, and our soldier’s lives.